Assignment 1 Draft 1

The internet is known to have brought many innovations positively affecting society both socially and economically. Within countries that have internet, using the internet has generally been looked at as a positive aspect of life. The Internet Age, however, does not exist without any flaws. More specifically, the internet has enabled ways for our private lives to no longer be our own. Information sent through the internet can be intercepted and seen by others, whether forcefully or because that’s where the information is being stored. This development has made it into our entertainment, with works such as Black Mirror episode “Shut Up and Dance” and novel The Circle by Dave Eggers have their own take on how our privacy has begun to decline. Black Mirror’s take on privacy is from the standpoint of being hacked and therefore unwillingly giving up private information. The episode uses common tropes of hacking to tell a story about the reality of being hacked, ultimately losing many aspects of privacy. The Circle’s take talks about corporations’ control over our information that we unintentionally give to the corporations. The novel uses the motif of being open to sharing private information to talk about large corporations’ role in our information. These works speak to how our privacy isn’t “private” during the Internet Age, where we unknowingly give up our privacy to access the internet.

¶ [Black Mirror episode summary + how it connects to topic]

Near the beginning of the episode, Black Mirror uses a common trope of what it’s like to be hacked. Kenny’s sister is found with his laptop stating that she tried running a program and ended up freezing the laptop. Kenny then takes the laptop away from her and restarts it only to be greeted with a pop-up with the opportunity to “win a smartphone”. Immediately he knows that his sister had downloaded malware and proceeds to download a malware removal tool. This scene is a common trope of getting hacked. As the viewer, we see that Kenny’s laptop is intact, but doesn’t work. Accompanied with his sister’s claim, we can come to conclude that there must be malware on his laptop. Our assumption is confirmed the same time Kenny sees the pop-up. This is a common way to show a PC being compromised from malware. The pop-up is generally something flashy and absurd, making it something that any logically thinking person shouldn’t click on. Being on the internet, the last thing we want is to get hacked. The moment someone else has a way to gain information about us unknowingly, our privacy is no longer private. Black Mirror perfectly highlights our fear of getting hacked by demonstrating Kenny’s immediate reaction to remove the malware. This scene was shot entirely without any explicit words stating he was hacked and yet the viewers can make out his situation. The scene finally ends with a cut to the view from Kenny’s laptop camera, watching him get a can of Diet Coke. At this moment, we know Kenny is being spied on without his knowledge.

At this point, anything Kenny does around his laptop is no longer private and is broadcasted to the hacker. Kenny is still under the assumption that the malware remover did its job and thought nothing about being hacked. A couple scenes later, we see Kenny at home with his sister. He decides to go to his room to use his laptop, that we know someone is watching Kenny from. The scene continues with Kenny moving a tissue box next to his laptop and then stands up to unbuckle his belt. It finishes off with Kenny in the bathroom washing his hands. Again, this scene is shown without words, but viewers can make the connection that Kenny had masturbated without knowing he was being recorded. Kenny only finds out he was being recorded when he saw an email of what he just did from the hacker. His reaction is enough to show the viewers that he knows what he did wasn’t private. He had expected that his private actions would be private. He hadn’t realized he was unfortunate enough to be a victim of a hack, which is reasonable to do so. That also happens to be the expectation for many internet users have while using the internet. Being hacked is rather unlikely, even if we are aware of what we do on the internet, we are still vulnerable to losing our privacy. To add on, the hacker is generally anonymous, which is highlighted in the episode as “Unknown”. The anonymity of the hacker makes being hacked a huge breach in privacy, especially for Kenny with what the hacker was able to get from Kenny.

¶ [The Circle novel summary + how it connects to topic]

The climax of the novel occurs when Mae is secretly speaking with Ty, one of the founders of The Circle, and is told about the shady stuff the company is doing. The conversation of information about users comes up, as the company is pushing to for users to have a mandatory membership account. The account would be paired with a mandatory chip that is meant to keep users safe. This would lead all information would be available to The Circle and only be channeled into one network. Ty ridicules that idea stating his concerns as, “In the interest of education and safety, everything they’ve done will be recorded, tracked, logged, analyzed—it’s permanent. Then, when they’re old enough to vote, to participate, their membership is mandatory. That’s where the Circle closes. Everyone will be tracked, cradle to grave, with no possibility of escape.” In thought, this idea is reasonable, however, Ty’s concerns focus on the privacy of the users. Upon having the account, the user would unknowingly give up their privacy for the product, on the off chance, to help keep them safe. This brings up concerns about what the company wants to do with the information they collect from user interactions. With real life connections like the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal. We mindlessly enter information about ourselves over the internet without thinking about where that information goes. It’s become so common, very little people question it and goes forgotten. But it’s not forgotten to the company that the information was “given” to. That information is stored and can be used for various purposes, bringing up privacy concerns, just as Ty.

The conversation continues to talk about the existing massive control The Circle has over society. The Circle has been rapidly growing ever since its initial release while crushing its competitors in the process. Ty sees this as an issue stating, “Already, 90 percent of the world’s searches go through the Circle. Without competitors, this will increase. Soon it’ll be nearly 100 percent.… How can anyone rise up against the Circle if they control all the information and access to it? They want everyone to have a Circle account, and they’re well on their way to making it illegal not to.” Ty’s description of The Circle’s possible monopoly has similar traits to Google’s search engine. Google is overwhelmingly the most used search engine, meaning an overwhelming number of peoples’ data is being sent to Google daily. That data can be used in whatever way they see fit, if needed. Once again, we are willingly giving information about ourselves without thinking much about it. [Not done with paragraph yet.]

¶ [Conclusion]